The Tender Cut
by Amberdreams
Summary: Warnings/Contains: self-harming, assisted self-harm. Spoilers: Season 4, takes place during/after Episode 09. Summary: In Hell, Dean had been rock while Alastair was water; seeping into every crack and freezing and expanding, freezing and expanding until each crack grew wider and wider, and Dean shattered all over again. Now Alastair has found his favourite pupil topside...


**Title**: **The Tender Cut**

**Pairing:** None explicit, though you could infer Sam/Dean or Alastair/Dean if you squint…

**Rating:** R

**Warnings/Contains:** self-harming, assisted self-harm

**Spoilers:** Season 4, takes place during/after Episode 09

**Remix of original story: **Gravitational Lens by **chaos_erevos**/ **lacerta**

**Summary: ** In Hell, Dean had been rock while Alastair was water; seeping into every crack and freezing and expanding, freezing and expanding until each crack grew wider and wider, and Dean shattered all over again.

Now Alastair has found Dean again, he wants to recapture lost pleasures.

:::

Alastair watched the brothers crash through the stained glass window and drop some twenty feet or so.

"That's going to hurt," he commented to no one as he strolled to the patch of sunlight now streaming unobstructed into the church loft. The Winchesters were picking themselves up out of the mess of broken glass and splintered wood, and running to their old jalopy of a car, and Alastair could see that their movements were restricted; jerky and pained. He wondered what injuries they had picked up, thought he might just follow them to find out.

It was easy enough to track them back to their tatty motel, to watch through the nicotine-stained curtains as they checked each other over for damage. He took a moment to admire the quiet professionalism the brothers brought to the process, the economy of movement in their dance. They stitched and swiped and pushed each other back into shape, armed with only whiskey and dental floss and Tylenol. Then Sam left Dean alone while he went out to replenish their supplies.

Alastair smiled.

When he'd gripped Dean by the throat earlier, it had felt like a reunion. A celebration of their reconnection. The emptiness and borderline despair underlying the piss-poor attempt at defiance pleased him greatly. The depth of the boy's self-loathing was particularly satisfying, and now, watching Dean through the grubby window, Alastair realised something wonderful.

They were still connected, he and his favourite pupil. All he needed to do was reach out and…._yes. There_. Alastair twisted, just a fraction; tweaked a couple of memories – _just so_ – and _voila_. The solution to the low self-esteem issue was revealed as Dean's eye caught on the sharp gleaming blade of the knife he always kept under his pillow at night.

:::

The best part wasn't the blood, though Alastair loved everything about the blood, of course. Its deep rich colour, like jewels glinting in the darkness. Its earthy, metallic smell; the memory of the delicious tang on his long prehensile tongue as he lapped it up. It wasn't even the pain caused by each slice of the blade.

No. The best part was the fact that Dean thought he could carve himself into something that fit. That belonged, was human. The best part was the invisible damage each cut was creating, the thin lines of darkness that marked the cracks in Dean's psyche.

The best part was the way that Sam's large hand was closed around Dean's, gently directing the knife across taut stomach muscles. Here. And here.

Sam had been a revelation. Alastair couldn't have wished for anything better. He could see now why the younger Winchester was the favoured one, why he had been chosen. Sam's creativity was admirable. Alastair particularly loved the way Sam had chosen to use Dean's freckles to play with – mapping vectors and tangents between each dark golden mark on his brother's pale skin. _See? Here's Cassiopea, there's Orion and the Great Bear_, springing into shape in lines of crimson_._ It was a work of art; a thing of beauty. It made Alastair proud; as though he had been the one who'd shaped Sam into this dichotomy of rage and love all by himself.

Those few false, twisted memories planted here and there were all it took to bring Dean into line, feeding on the low self worth that was already present – such a rich fertile soil for Alastair's wicked toxic seeds to grow. In so many ways, this was even more fun than Hell; making Dean Winchester feel like he'd never left.

As for Sam, well, Alastair hadn't had to do a thing to help the younger Winchester along. That corruption was already there, the demon blood clinging to Sam's human cells like some kind of nano-virus, warping his reality and turning his good intentions against him at every step. Ruby might be a devious little bitch, but she had done a good job on this one, and Alastair would be the first to acknowledge it.

It was amusing to watch.

In Hell, Dean had been rock while Alastair was water, seeping into every crack and freezing and expanding, freezing and expanding until each crack grew wider and wider, and Dean shattered all over again. Alastair's capacity for waiting was endless, because he knew patience was rewarded, every time.

Now he didn't even need to lift the knife himself, he had Dean and Sam to do it for him, and though each slicing cut was shallow, they bled freely and the scars were much, much deeper than they looked. Sam was far finer a weapon than any Alastair could have hoped to acquire, because Sam loved Dean, and the tenderness that mixed with the simmering anger the demon blood was nurturing inside the younger brother's veins was truly devastating.

But Dean loved Sam more than anything and that love was making him helpless, holding him still under the blade, making him fucking _grateful_ for the attention. Making him feel real, and wanted. Taking each cut as a measure of affection and caring that he didn't deserve.

:::

"It's nothing. It's not what you think." Sam isn't really listening, because Dean is babbling, his cheeks flushed and pale both at the same time, hectic, almost feverish. Sam can see the purple bruising around the shoulder he'd snapped back into place, the dark thread of the stitches he'd sewn into his brother's flesh just before he'd gone out to the store for ice and a fresh bottle of Jack. Sent away by Dean so that Dean could – what?

Sam looks at the knife in Dean's hand, at the fresh bloody line Dean has just cut into his own thigh while Sam was gone. He knows he is staring, knows but can't seem to stop. Without removing his gaze from his brother's body, Sam slowly places the full bottle of whiskey and the large bag of ice on the side-table.

Then Dean's face just kind of crumples. Neither of them notice the dull thud as the knife drops from nerveless fingers onto the dirty carpet.

"I used to have scars, Sammy. Before…," Dean's empty hand waves vaguely at nothing. Unable to shape it, to scope it.

_Hell. _

"I'd get marked killing monsters. I was… I was." His voice falters, trips over the words that Sam can hear any way, clear as a bell inside his head. _Human. A hero._

With the evidence of his honour written clear on his body.

_Yes_, Sam thinks. Once his big brother was a hero - taller than him, braver, broader, always ready to kick the bullies, take bullets, catch grenades. All for Sam. Seeing Dean like this, vulnerable, damaged, diminished – it makes Sam burn. Of course, nearly everything makes Sam angry these days, but who cares? Sam knows the anger makes him stronger.

His brother is broken, and they did that to him in Hell. A Hell that Dean had chosen in order to save Sam, and that makes this all Sam's fault. Dean has perched on the edge of the bed, his head has dropped into his hands and all Sam can see is the defeat written into every line of Dean's posture. It is up to him to make things right, and as he looks from the curve of Dean's bare back to the glint of the knife on the grungy green carpet, Sam thinks he can see a way of doing just that.

He bends down slowly, his fingers curling round the well-worn handle of the knife.

"Lie down on the bed," Sam orders, trying for a light but firm tone in an attempt to disguise his misgivings. Dean flashes him a look that is hard to interpret – fear, mixed with anticipation and gratitude and even relief – and stretches out obediently on his front, hands above his head gripping the edges of the headboard.

Sam runs a hand down Dean's perfect skin, watches the muscles flex and the goosebumps rise under his touch. He swallows hard, flushes. Wonders how Dean's blood would taste.

:::

When Alastair caught up with the Winchesters again, it was in a town full of dead people walking, which seemed poetic in its symmetry. Alastair had a thing for symmetry. Some demons had complained he took it too far sometimes, when he'd insisted on always evening up an amputation or two. But he would point out that God had created humans with two lungs, two legs, two arms, et cetera, and therefore it was only polite to ensure that perfection and balance was maintained while dismembering the aforesaid God's creations.

Alastair realised then that he'd become jaded in Hell. He'd been there so long amid the welter of gore and entrails he had forgotten the sweetness provided by false hope and betrayal. He had used to have such finesse, such _skill_, no soul had lasted long under his ministrations. Then came the Winchesters. The father, unbroken after a hundred years, had slipped through his grasp, for Alastair to find he had been offered a second chance with the son.

Oh, and what a soul Dean's had been – one that shouldn't have been there at all, and it shone all the brighter and tasted all the sweeter for it. Alastair's appetite had been insatiable, he almost hadn't wanted Dean to break, so that he could go on feasting on that deliciousness forever. But all good things come to an end, even in Hell where anguish is eternal, and Alastair had a job to do.

So he'd exploited the vulnerabilities he'd found in Dean that John had never displayed. He poured himself into those fissures and broke Dean into a thousand pieces, only to reconstruct the no-longer-so-righteous man with a knife in his hand and years of torture ahead in which to avenge himself on some other poor forgotten souls. And even then, the guilt Dean had felt was more delightful than the suffering that poured off the souls he had tormented.

His rage at having all this snatched away by those cursed angels had been boundless. _But perhaps there were compensations to be found topside after all_, Alastair mused as he watched; turned voyeur by circumstance and by choice.

:::

Sam throws the bloodied wipes into the trash and rinses his hands, feeling like everything is moving in slow motion. He glances across the room to where Dean is lying still, sleeping so peacefully that Sam is having a hard time remembering that it was the power of his knife that has provided this release for his weary brother. Even from a distance, Sam can clearly see backs of Dean's thighs are crisscrossed with red lines that Sam so carefully, lovingly, sewed back together after the cutting was done. Sam is not blind to the irony in that, or the fact that it was only in bloodshed and pain that Dean's subconscious could forget Hell.

Sam's expression is scorn and compassion in equal measures as he takes a moment to pull the coverlet over Dean's slumbering form with one hand, even as his other is groping in his pocket for his cell phone, and his fingers are finding speed-dial #2.

"Hey, Ruby. Yeah, he's asleep; I'm on my way."

Sam closes the door gently behind him, leaving behind the marks of his own righteousness carved into Dean Winchester's skin.

:::

_A/N_

_This was a tough assignment as the original fic was so good! Beautifully and sensitively written._

_Also self-harm was not an issue I'd ever thought about, at least not in relation to Dean – so – definitely a challenge! I hope I made some sense of the topic, and made a decent fist at a remix._

_A note about self-harm (from Wikipedia)_

_Self-harm. Some individuals may suffer from dissociation harboring a desire to feel real or to fit in to society's rules. Self-harm in such individuals is not associated with suicidal or para-suicidal behavior. People who self-harm are not usually seeking to end their own life; it has been suggested instead that they are using self-harm as a coping mechanism to relieve emotional pain or discomfort or as an attempt to communicate distress._


End file.
